To create a new service, product or result, your team must meet specific goals and success criteria at a specified time. This will include the basics of project management: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team.

Although there is the thought process that ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’, this isn’t always the case when you are taking on a new project. Getting help from employees of all levels can bring a fresh perspective to the task at hand, breathing new life into processes and how to implement them.

Avoid Micromanaging

Giving up control over aspects of the work your company produces is one of the most healthy things you can do as a manager. Through fear that certain tasks will not be done to your standard or a lack of trust in the ability of your employees, this style of project management can really stifle your team and the potential success of each project.

To relinquish control or simply take a step back can be difficult if you are used to having your eye on every aspect of your business. However, by divvying out responsibility – maybe just part of it or a possibly all of it – you can focus your attention on the bigger picture or other matters that need your attention.

One of the key perks of project management is the ability to move from one project to another, keeping things fresh and exciting in the workplace. Creative people can flourish in this environment if given free reign to flex those creative muscles. By overseeing even the most simple of tasks, this enjoyment will eventually wane and die. New research by YouGov says that 80 percent of employees have experienced what they consider poor management, or a poor manager, at least once during their career, with 55 per cent actually quitting their job because of bad management.

Time Costs of Micromanagement – It can often take a manager less time to perform a task themselves than to hover over an employee to micromanage them completing the same task. This is an ineffective use of time for someone in a senior role, which could be better used developing systems and facilitating processes.

Stifling Creativity and Efficiency – A good thing to keep in mind is the reason you hired this person. They seemed capable, enthusiastic and you could see them improving your business in some way. Micromanagement essentially creates employees who all perform in exactly the same way – your way – so that nothing new and improved can reach the projects you manage. Given the breathing room to do so, employees can develop ways of working more efficiently on tasks they perform every day, potentially creating superior outcomes.

Reduced Job Satisfaction – This sort of atmosphere in a workplace creates unnecessary stress on the employer and the employee. Under this management style, employees become dissatisfied and less enthusiastic about the task at hand. They don’t feel empowered or trusted, so why would they stick around? Staff turnover is sure to be higher, causing you more hassle and eating in to valuable time.

Lean Management

A great project management style to adopt is lean management. One of the key takeaways from this method is to encourage shared responsibility and share leadership. As explained by Kanban software, lean management is about continuously improving work processes, purposes and people – discouraging the mentality of trying to hold control of work processes and ‘keeping the spotlight’.

A great idea can be born at any level within the company so giving everyone a ‘seat at the table’ is a positive step forward. After all, who would know the best way a job should be done other than the people who are actually doing the job every day?

The three basic ideas of lean management are:

1. Delivering value from your customer’s perspective

2. Eliminating waste (things that don’t bring value to the end product)

3. Continuous improvement.

To succeed in creating value to the customer, lean management helps as a guide for building a stable organisation that evolves constantly and helps to identify actual problems, so you can remove them. Through lean you should be able to create a stable workflow based on customer demand, while also ensuring that every employee is involved in the process of improving.

The removal of micromanagement and the introduction of a tried and trusted workflow can turn your business around. With improved processes and happier, more fulfilled employees, you can bet on happier customers and increased business.

If you want to make a successful career in many fields you will be expected to achieve professional qualifications and undertake continuing professional development (CPD) throughout much of your early career. You might think you already have a university degree or higher level apprenticeship but in many professions that simply isn't enough. Take project management, for example, or accountancy or engineering – these are roles where you need to be willing to commit to maybe several years more study after leaving full-time education if you are to achieve the greatest success and the pnnacle of chartered status.

Even in fields without chartered status, such as sales and marketing, it is still important to keep your skills up to date, undertake sales training courses to learn the latest best practice, and gain recognised qualifications such as those from the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM)

You will need to gain qualifications such as the prestigious APMP exam from the Association for Project Management (which, incidentally now has a Royal Charter). Many people still refer to the APMP but, in fact, it has recently had a name change as is now formally known as the APM Project Management Qualification (APM PMQ).

You can, of course, do this by taking a series of regular project management training courses or you can take a different route if you haven't been to university and don't plan on going. One such alternative type of training is to become a project management apprentice in order to get the necessary qualifications and take your career to the next level. However, it can be hard to determine which route will be right for you so here's overview of some of the possible options for the role of project manager.

First, let’s consider agile project management. Agile project management focuses on the incremental development of solutions, allowing those working on the project to quickly react when objectives change without undermining the integrity of the project. There are 8 principles of effective agile projects: demonstrate control, develop iteratively, never compromise quality, deliver on time, communicate cleanly and continuously, build incrementally from firm foundations, collaborate, and focus on the business need.

A more traditional approach

As already mentioned the APM Project Management Qualification (remember the one that used to be called the APMP?) is designed for anyone who sees a knowledge of project management as an essential part of their role – even if they are not actually a project manager. So, for instance a member of the PMO (Project Management Office). It provides a solid foundation in PM skills, tools, processes and behaviours. Anyone can take this course and achieve a professional qualification,.

So undertaking training to gain professional qualifications, and continuing to develop your skills and knowledge, are now a part of many careers. And, indeed, sometimes the only way to distinguish yourself from other professionals with the sme level of experience.

If you are currently struggling in your small business I’m going to guess it’s because you have yet to find the right training. Have you listened to every CD and read every training manual that you can get your hands on? While
training methods can be useful in regards to professional development they are not going to magically grow your business for you. It is by applying what you have learnt in the training in the workplace.

Take project management for instance, many organisations large and small struggle to consistently achieve project success yet the right project management training, when put into practise, has been proven to increase the proportion of successful projects.
So little wonder that businesses are investing in professional project management courses for their employees, such as the APM Project Fundamentals course.
And the same is true of finding the right training in other fields.

Why "On-The-Job" Training Doesn’t Work

I have been in this industry since 2001 and when I first started out my project manager told me everything he knew - that was my "on-the-job" training.

After 16 months and hundreds of working hours as a project manager I had achieved a total of ZERO successful projects. Senior execs in my organisation at the time thought that professional project training for their employees was just a waste of thousands
of dollars. Why did I fail in those early months? Simply put, the so-called "on-the-job" training that I received does not work! Here’s why:

Good Managers are not Good Trainers

You can be very good at your job but that doesn't mean you know how to properly train other employees. Training is a skill, even more so in a profession such as project management.

Our society has learned to shut down when anyone asks them to explain how they do their job. People are not comfortable talking about what they do either because they are worried it will show up gaps in their own knowledge or because they want to keep
all their tricks-of-the-trade to themselves to protect their own job.

Why should a PM tell everything they know about APMP, PMP, PRINCE2 or Agile project management to you? They probably don't trust you.